Let’s see if I can be the first person to post the results of the Far West Open on the Internet. Just as I predicted, Sergei\u00c2\u00a0Kudrin and Eric Sevillano played a super-quick draw to clinch a tie for first. On board two, Gergely Antal of Hungary\u00c2\u00a0(whose first name I forgot in my previous entry) defeated Ricardo de Guzman (whose first name I always get wrong anyway) to make it a three-way tie at 5-1. There was also a three-way tie for fourth at 4.5-1.5 between Jesse Kraai, David Pruess, and John Bryant. Finally, there was a six-way tie for seventh between (deep breath) Gurevich, Mezentsev, Kretchetov, de Guzman, Naroditsky, and Fuentes at 4-2.<\/p>\n
I won my final game in a very nice knight-versus-bishop endgame (I had the knight). My opponent was a\u00c2\u00a0class A player named Mark Rand, who offered me a draw on move ten. No thanks!\u00c2\u00a0Typically for me, I had the second-to-last game\u00c2\u00a0to finish in the whole tournament. A similar thing happened last fall in the Western States Open, where I pulled off my miraculous win over Jennifer Acon with a rook and bishop versus rook and three pawns. No miracles were required this time, just a slow and steady squeeze.<\/p>\n
With the win I joined either a four-way tie or a five-way tie for the under-2200 prize. The exact number depends on the last game in the tournament to finish. I’m sure that it’s over by now, but I am up in my room and so I can’t tell you how it came out. I think probably a draw, which will make it a four-way tie and a $326 prize for me.<\/p>\n
This is the fifth tournament in a row where I have won a prize. It seems as if I’ve sort of hit a “comfort zone.” Of course, part of the reason is that I keep winning under-2200 prizes. Maybe that means I shouldn’t be rated under 2200 any more. Unfortunately, the USCF ratings calculator doesn’t agree.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 :-<<\/p>\n
Okay, I’m going to go downstairs now and wait for the prizes to be handed out. Also, of course, there will be a speed-chess playoff between Kudrin, Sevillano, and Antal for first place, but I don’t care very much about that (and indeed, I think that the three participants don’t care very much either.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Let’s see if I can be the first person to post the results of the Far West Open on the Internet. Just as I predicted, Sergei\u00c2\u00a0Kudrin and Eric Sevillano played a super-quick draw to clinch a tie for first. On board two, Gergely Antal of Hungary\u00c2\u00a0(whose first name I forgot in my previous entry) defeated […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}